Last month the Saracens Sport Foundation took a group of students from Capital City Academy on an Outward Bound trip to Aberdovey in north Wales as part of the Go Forward programme!
The Year Seven students from Capital City Academy have been working alongside the Saracens Sport Foundation (with course leader and project officer Jake Matthews) to complete a project named ‘Go Forward’.
The aims of the project are to increase confidence, resilience, determination and empathy which embrace the school’s own values.
36 Year Seven students embarked on a long trip (seven hours) from Capital on Monday morning through the wind, rain and snow and were treated to a number of exciting but very challenging experiences which included a two-day overnight expedition, gorge walking, canoeing and a number of team building activities.
The most challenging of all the activities was the expedition. The students camped out (yes in February!) and managed to walk over 12 miles with their equipment in challenging weather up and down mountain trails.
The students were so positive and helped each other out even when they were tired and hungry. We asked a couple of students for their viewpoints.
Here is what Cristina said: “When we got to the campsite, we instantly got to work and set up our tents. Afterwards, we had a fun adventure where we set out to discover an abandoned castle, which was raided from the Welsh rulers by the English 900 years ago. It was extremely interesting!”
The next morning, at around 5am, after waking from a very uncomfortable sleep in a tent, we started to clean up. At 7.30am, the hiking began. We had walked over to a mountain, which took us an hour. This is when moaning began as we all stumbled over steep hills and sheep waste!
Overall, it took us over 5-6 hours to climb what we think were two mountains back to the meeting point of the minibus. Apart from all of the suffering of hurting backs, legs and shoulders and the tired moans, this was a unique experience that many should try! The whole group had a great feeling of accomplishment!”